Bernette Johnson was the only legitimate choice for Louisiana chief justice: Jarvis DeBerry

The facts didn't change. Bernette Johnson was always the only legitimate candidate to take the chief justice seat when Kitty Kimball retires from the Louisiana Supreme Court in January. To figure out who the chief justice is, you've only got to answer one question: Who's been there the longest? That answer, Bernette Johnson, was clear when Kimball announced her...

The facts didn't change. Bernette Johnson was always the only
legitimate candidate to take the chief justice seat when Kitty Kimball retires from
the Louisiana Supreme Court in January. To figure out who the chief justice is, you've
only got to answer one question: Who's been there the longest?

That answer, Bernette Johnson, was
clear when Kimball announced her retirement. And it remained clear the whole time the rest
of the court was embarrassing itself with promises that it was going to huddle and
figure out the answer. Johnson had been there longer than next-in-line Jeffery
Victory. He was making the offensive argument that her first years on the bench
didn't count, that until 2000 she was in effect a second-class judge.

Louisiana had rigged the system,
had drawn up districts that made it mathematically unlikely that in this
racially polarized state a black candidate would ever be elected to the Supreme
Court. A lawsuit forced the state to redraw those lines, but before those new
districts were set, a compromise was reached to give plaintiffs more immediate satisfaction.
None of the seven justices already there would be kicked off the court. An
eighth seat would be added. That person would nominally be an appellate court
judge but be appointed to the Supreme Court and operate in every way as a
Supreme Court justice.

In every way except seniority. At
least that's what Jeffrey Victory, who got to the court after Johnson, was trying
to argue. It was a wrongheaded argument
through and through, but most of all because Victory was trying to make the
state's past history of racial discrimination work to his advantage.

Johnson
sued her colleagues and said they had no right to even be considering the
question of seniority. Federal courts agreed with her. Tuesday, her fellow
justices threw in the towel and unanimously declared what everybody else
already knew: that Johnson had been there the longest and was therefore set to
be the next chief justice. Time on the court
as an appointed justice is just as valid as time on the court as an elected
justice, they decided.

The
tone of the ruling is rather defensive. Race never played a role, the justices
say. Neither did gender, geography, personalities or politics. It was a fair and
legitimate question posed by Victory, the justices say. Besides, they knew they
had time to decide the matter before Kimball's January retirement. It's all
resolved now, they say. "To that end, no one was deprived of anything."

Unless
you're talking of respect. They deprived Johnson of that even as the public was
losing respect for them.